Let The Galaxy Burn

by Marc

  ‘Steady!’ Al’Kahan called, air escaping both from his mouth and the wound. His head spun, oxygen depleted.

  A barrage of laser and lead whipped across the riders. Explosions from mortars and grenades rent the ground.

  ‘Now!’ Al’Kahan cried. On this mark, every man slid effortlessly to the right side of his horse, bodies pressed flat against his steed’s flanks. Some horses were hit, some fell, but more rode on.

  ‘For Atilla!’ one warrior cried as the cavalry swept high and hard over the enemy lines. Ignoring their assailants, the riders doubled their speed. The pounding of hooves echoed deep into the earth. Sweat and blood were swept from horse and man, leaving thin red wakes in the shimmering heat. The riders lowered their lances. Artillery crews, still scrambling to load their cannons, scrambled for hand weapons. The Atillans let forth a single war cry, twenty sounding as though they were a hundred.

  The explosive-tipped lances found their marks. Thick iron plates were torn from machines, hulls dripping with wires, gutted. Explosion after explosion, like a string of firecrackers, burst out across the battlefield. Rounds of ammunition, like rain from the heavens, filled the air. Al’Kahan threw grenade after grenade at stockpiles of munitions. The rear of the Chaos army was engulfed in cleansing flame. Burning tracks and fragments of metal still fell as the Atillans moved on to cut down the fleeing.

  AL’KAHAN RAN HIS hands across his chest. It had healed well. The scar was impressive, the largest on his battle-worn torso. The soft sounds of the battlecruiser filled the room. Transparent plasteel windows, like the hollow eyes of the dead, looked out across the stars. Al’Kahan stared at a sharp blue nebula, crackling with lightning and flame. The lulling hum of the starship’s engines and the glorious scene before him made Al’Kahan almost long to remain in deep space, almost.

  He looked down a the large Imperial Eagle that hung from his chest from chains of gold. He could feel its weight through the layers of fur and hessian he wore. His cloak bore further trophies and medals, their shining metal like strange ticks amongst the pelts. Al’Kahan considered his reflection in the window. Broad plainsman’s hat, trimmed with fur, single wild warrior’s eye, long braided hair. He could hardly distinguish between his dark black locks and the snow leopard’s mane he wore about the top of his cloak. Both were worn with age and dark from a thousand blood stains.

  ‘Commander!’ A voice from behind.

  Al’Kahan turned about slowly. A commissar; dark leather coat, black peaked cap, trimmed and adorned with silver skulls; eyes like flint.

  ‘Commander. I trust you have healed.’

  ‘Indeed, Commissar Streck.’

  ‘Your Imperial Seal fits you well.’ The commissar turned towards the window.

  ‘It feels good about my neck.’

  ‘As well it should. You have served the Emperor well.’ The commissar worked a crank, shielding the window and throwing the room into neon bright.

  ‘A hundred battles.’

  ‘Time for you to take your place as lord of your own province on Dagnar II.’

  ‘I look forward to such an honour.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I could be no less certain.’

  ‘Interesting. I thought your people longed for their homeworld more than any other. The Ice Warriors of Valhalla long for the sun, the Alderian Shock Fighters hate their deathworld, the Gorchak Fire Sentinels thirst. But the Atillans never tire of hunting bison, warring amongst their clans… or at least that’s what the Adeptus Ministoram have always held.’

  ‘I’m sure they have their reasons.’

  ‘Most assuredly.’ Commissar Streck turned and made to leave the room, then paused. ‘However… you have an irregular choice. In three days we will dock with your home world. A unique opportunity. We need to take on new steeds and other supplies for your founding, then head off to Dagnar II, and from there on to Olstar Prime. If you were to stay you would not be dishonoured. You could return to your hunting grounds.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Let me simply say that I have long maintained that with time a warrior of the Emperor comes to know only battle. I look forward to being able to prove this in a report to the Ministorum. A… test case, if you will.’

  ‘I see.’ Al’Kahan looked down at the seal on his chest.

  ‘The ship will dock for a week only.’ Streck said. ‘You have your Emperor’s blessing.’

  ‘ONE WEEK, COMMANDER,’ Commissar Streck called from across one of the many loading bays of the massive space vessel. Al’Kahan did not turn to acknowledge the man. Rather he waded through the air, thick with fuel, towards the towering bay doors. He longed to feel the soft soil of his home-world beneath his feet, not lifeless steel.

  Al’Kahan’s furs, bundled upon his back, weighed heavily on his shoulders. Filled with gifts and trophies from the Emperor, they were foreign objects on Atillan soil. A twisting path of conduits and gantries crowded and cluttered Al’Kahan’s progress. The Emperor’s ship, even now, with its foul vapours and grinding noises, tried to hold him back from his homeland. The land to which his soul would be forever joined.

  Al’Kahan reached the bay’s vast external doors. Two men from the Prakash XIIth – boys only – stood at their stations by a smaller, man-sized doorway. One stepped before him. Al’Kahan pulled his papers from his coat and pushed them hard into the young Guard’s forehead. The man stumbled backwards. Al’Kahan swept his feet from beneath him with a solid throw from his leg and spun about letting his heavy furs catch the other in the neck. The second fell to the ground just seconds after his companion. The papers, heavy with seals, fluttered down to land on the ground between the men. Al’Kahan stepped through and was struck by the winds of home. He held his breath and strode out onto the sloping walkway, then leapt down into the knee high grasses of the open plains of Atilla.

  The massive space vessel towered from the grasslands. It would block out much of the sun as it rose, its shadows turning around the countryside like a giant sundial. The long grasses surged and crested in the warm evening breeze. They washed around Al’Kahan, slapping against his thighs as he strode on. The ship had put down next to a small Imperial outpost, which huddled in a wide, blasted-earth clearing. More a collection of scattered administrative buildings than an organised base, the buildings looked like squat dung heaps.

  Worse still, like buzzing flies, Atillans were gathered in groups about the buildings. Approaching them, Al’Kahan saw that there were more than he’d initially thought. Many lay huddled together drunkenly amidst pools of bile and filth. Some shivered around small fires. As Al’Kahan drew near, he saw that they did not cook desert hen or bison side, but something else, something more akin to a rodent.

  Mongrels and beggars scuttled out of Al’Kahan’s way as he strode on. The deeper into the quagmire of scorched earth and hastily erected bunkers he went, the more Al’Kahan worried he would never escape it. It was as though he were entering the heart of the dark plains, that dire place to which the dishonoured dead passed on. Smaller spacecraft, not bearing the glorious eagle of the Imperium, had landed here too. Rogue traders? Mercenaries? Pirates? Al’Kahan cold not be certain. All that he could tell was that these men were making a living off his people. From out of the side of one of these ships a pledge trader was at work. Beggars and wounded queued in a soulless line outside the small craft. A dark, heavy-set man was passing out food in battered tin bowls.

  ‘Sister, what are you doing?’ Al’Kahan leant in to talk to a woman in the queue. ‘I am hungry, brother.’ ‘Where is your clan, your husband?’

  ‘He left to fight for the Sky Emperor. I came here to find peace.’ ‘I see no peace.’

  ‘Can I help you?’ A trader type in long, mesh-armour robes strode forward to stand face to face with Al’Kahan. ‘You have made beggars of my people.’ Al’Kahan sneered. ‘We offer them food in return for performing small tasks on our ship up in orbit.’ the trader said pulling aside his coat. ‘Join the queue or leave.’ He revea
led the handle of a laspistol underneath his garments. ‘I know what this is.’ Al’Kahan said to the assembled tribespeople. ‘This is a ploy. These men are slavers, they will take you up to their ship to imprison the strongest of you and slay the others!’

  ‘What? That is simply untrue!’ The trader turned to face the crowd, his hands held open in a gesture of platitude.

  Al’Kahan grabbed the trader by the back of the neck and thrust him forward to the ground. Throwing back the man’s coat, Al’Kahan revealed a set of manacles at his belt. ‘Look!’ he called to the crowd. ‘What merchant has need of these?’ Al’Kahan drove the slaver’s face further into the ground. Others drew near. Al’Kahan snatched the man’s laspistol from beneath his coat. ‘Back off!’ Al’Kahan growled holding it to the back of the floored slaver’s head. ‘Return to your tribes!’ he screamed at the beggars, ‘This is no way for Atillans to live!’

  Al’Kahan spat to the ground and strode into the night. The blank faces watched him go in silence. No one moved, no one left.

  The eyes of his ancestors were beginning to appear in the heavens above him. He still recalled each pattern, each constellation, from that time many years ago when, with a boy’s foolish notions of the glory of war, he had set forth into those stars to fight for the Emperor God. His ancestors would guide him, guide his own eyes to the hunting grounds of his people. Al’Kahan imagined what they would be doing – perhaps feasting after a great hunt, gathered around the fires. He would walk from the light of each hearth to meet with old friends and new warriors. Young men keen to gain their first scars on the field of battle. It would be so good to be back.

  THE NIGHTS HAD passed slowly. Al’Kahan slept alongside the tired old mare he’d bought from a trader back at the outpost. The animal was as scarred and wrinkled as Al’Kahan himself. Its breath was shallow when it slept, a constant reminder of his own mortality. He found he had somehow lost the knack of lighting a fire, and had had to use Imperial Guard-issue flame flares to keep himself warm.

  There were few signs of his clan on the plains – the marks made by the herds were old, and there were no fresh horses prints either. On the third night, though, he came across an old camp, tents bunt to the ground, and clan banners buried in the dirt. There were no bodies. Amidst the charred remains, Al’Kahan found a lasgun, its charge burnt out. It bore no markings. Had his people taken to using the weapons of the Imperium?

  On the fourth night, Al’Kahan wound his way along Kapak Canyon’s massive ridges. It was a wide gulf, as though the finger of some god had stripped back the earth revealing its inner workings. In the valley there were channels like arteries, boulders and outcrops like cancers and ancient caves like hollow sockets. If his clan had been attacked this would be their place of refuge. It had been that way for hundreds of years. Only the Hawk’s Shadow clan knew of the tunnels and the ridges and could hide here for many days. In a hidden valley, through the disguised arch of a rocky outcrop, he saw at last the familiar tents of his clan. They were smaller than he recalled, more ramshackle. A few mongrels fought over a bone in the moonlight. He could see no guards.

  Al’Kahan gritted his teeth and dismounted. He strode on, his arms wrapped tight around the fur bundle he had brought from the ship. The dogs ran away barking into the night as he approached. A young Atillan, facial scars still fresh, stepped from the shadows, his sabre drawn.

  ‘Back off,’ Al’Kahan mumbled.

  ‘You are in the territory of the Hawk’s Shadow Clan.’ The boy stepped closer, bringing his sabre to bear. ‘You will back off.’

  ‘I am Al’Kahan. I am one of the Hawk’s Shadow.’

  ‘There is no one by that name amongst our clan.’

  ‘You are too young to know any better.’ Al’Kahan proceeded to continue past the boy.

  ‘Drop what you hold or my sword will drink of your blood.’ the boy snarled.

  ‘No. I am Al’Kahan!’

  The boy lunged at him. The old warrior stepped aside, grabbed hold of the boy’s arm and smartly lifted upwards. The boy let out a high scream, dropping his sabre, and clutched at his shoulder joint.

  ‘It’ll snap back in.’ Al’Kahan sneered.

  Taking up the fallen sword, Al’Kahan strode towards the nearest hut. Tribespeople had run out at the screaming of the boy. The warrior slashed back the curtain across the entrance to the tent.

  ‘Alyshfa!’ Al’Kahan called for his wife.

  A battered tribesman stood up, casting aside his furs. His face and body were scarred and wan.

  Al’Kahan slit open another tent. She was not here either. A woman sat surrounded by many children, her face worn, her eyes red from crying. The babes were thin, they began to cry and scream.

  Al’Kahan entered more tents. With each slice of the sabre, the tragedy of his tribe was revealed to him. Outsiders slept with tribesmen. Stinking carcasses, some many days old, were being used for food. Horses were lame.

  ‘Alyshfa!’ Al’Kahan called, slashing open another one of the wretched hovels. A man sat bolt upright from beneath a mound of furs, a terrified look in his eyes. There was a familiar woman’s form at his side.

  ‘Alyshfa! Your husband has returned!’ Al’Kahan yelled as the man leapt up and snatched at a hunting lance resting high against the roof.

  Al’Kahan brought his sabre down on the tribesman’s outstretched hand. It fell to the floor. The tribesman let out a howl. Al’Kahan grabbed him by his braids and threw his naked frame out of the door.

  ‘Al’Kahan!’ a sombre-eyed woman, her hair greying, shouted back at him. Her skin read like life’s map, a map Al’Kahan could hardly read. He half-recognised her as she snatched hold of his hand.

  Al’Kahan spun hastily to face the tribesmen entering his door and shoved Alyshfa back onto the bed. One of the advancing tribesmen swung hard towards Al’Kahan’s head. He ducked and wrenched a fur rug from the ground, tripping the tribesman who crashed through a large water vase. The floor flooded. Another man rushed Al’Kahan. He stepped into the warrior’s path and smashed the hilt of his sabre into his face.

  ‘Come on, you whelps!’ Al’Kahan barked out of the hut. ‘Let’s see how many it takes until you show me your respect!’

  Suddenly he felt a sharp pain across the back of his skull. Staggering around he saw Alyshfa above him, a heavy iron pot held tightly in her hand, a streak of his blood on its hard base.

  AL’KAHAN OPENED his eyes. Above him he saw blankets hanging from the support beams of the leather tent. His head was throbbing. He lay on the ground in the damp furs. Alyshfa sat on the ground beside him, holding a sabre to his neck – the sabre he had given her on the day he left.

  She had aged more than he. Her eyes were as though they had seen the horrors of the warp, her hair streaked grey and knotted. She still had a noble bearing, but it seemed as though she was struggling to maintain it, to save face before him.

  ‘You hit me.’ Al’Kahan reached to feel the crown of his head.

  ‘You were destroying my tent.’

  ‘You are my wife,’ Al’Kahan mumbled. He could taste the blood from his cut lip.

  ‘Was! I was your wife.’ Alyshfa placed the sword at her side. ‘When a wife’s husband departs on a sky ship, she becomes widowed. She may choose a new husband after the time of mourning.’

  ‘You are no longer widowed. I have returned.’

  ‘I mourned your passing. A fool, you took to the stars. You fought for the Sky Emperor. You left. What more is there to say?’

  ‘I have returned to my people. I see that they need me.’ Al’Kahan sat up slowly. It dawned on him that he was arguing with her as though he had only departed yesterday. She had her temper still, as he had his. Some things on Atilla had not changed.

  ‘We are fine without you, Al’Kahan. Your place is no longer amongst us.’

  ‘All the traditions have been forgotten. I was attacked by a boy, too stupid to know the rules of hospitality. Who is headman now?’

  ‘Po’Thar is dead.
Like I said, a lifetime has passed since your leaving. Our tribe is no longer glorious. We starve, our tribesmen are but boys. Traditions are our last concern.’

  ‘That saddens me.’ Al’Kahan stood gingerly. ‘It is a pity. Our traditions are what make us Atillans.’

  ‘There are new traditions. Things are changing.’ Alyshfa handed Al’Kahan a damp rag. He placed it on his head.

  ‘They have changed all too much. Where are all the men?’

  ‘They rode against the warlord, Talthar. Our herd was stolen and they sought to bring it back.’

  Al’Kahan paced around the perimeters of the tent, trying to clear his muddled head. He peered outside the flap. A crowd had gathered outside, they stood back from the tent as they caught sight of Al’Kahan. There were very few able warriors, ten at the most.

  ‘Our warriors were defeated?’ he asked Alyshfa, turning back to the room.

  ‘Survivors told of a fortress, of weapons bought from sky traders. They rode against it and tried to attack, but could not assail its walls or defeat their guns.’

  ‘Where is your… husband?’

  ‘With the wisewoman. She is mending his wound.’

  ‘I can pay for a new hand.’

  ‘He is proud. He will neither take your money nor let a machine replace his flesh.’

  Al’Kahan regarded the woman he had only known as a girl. She wore the sorrow of his tribe like a veil, but beneath it he could still see some inkling of pride.

  He strode out of the tent. The crowd staggered backwards, some men reaching for sabres. Al’Kahan held up his hands. They stared intently at the figure who had arrived a frenzied madman.

  ‘Come dawn,’ Al’Kahan said, ‘come dawn we will make plans to renew our tribe.’

  ‘WELCOME, THE ONCE-proud tribes of Kapak Valley.’ Al’Kahan stood upon the back of a horse, looking out over a rabble of wounded men, boys and women who had turned against the traditions. ‘I am Al’Kahan. I have served the Sky Emperor and have returned to rejoin my people. Here I have found nothing but sorrow and tears. This warlord refuses the ways of our people by plundering and stealing bison and setting rock and stone to earth to make a fortress. These plains belong to all. Our ancestors divided them equally, so that we could all be free to ride the lands and eat of their harvests. This Talthar is an enemy to us all, an enemy to our traditions, to our ancestors.’